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Boulder's Uwingu offers crater naming rights for Mars One mapping

As little as $5 buys chance to make mark on map for red planet's settlers

By Charlie Brennan

Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
12/04/2014 02:28:20 PM MST

Updated:
12/04/2014 02:29:04 PM MST

In this photograph from the Indian Space Research Organisation from Sept. 30, the planet Mars is seen in an image taken by the ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft. (ISRO / AFP)

If the Mars One mission to put a permanent human settlement on Mars succeeds, its pioneers could be carrying a map that currently Earth-bound folks helped create.

And the work of building that map now comes with a holiday-season tie-in.

Uwingu, a Boulder-based company aimed at helping people connect with space exploration and astronomy, has created what it bills as a "worldwide. first-ever" opportunity to celebrate the holidays by naming a feature on Mars as a gift — for as little as $5.

Uwingu's CEO and founder, Alan Stern, acknowledged that commercial ventures offering naming rights in space are nothing new, and that some of them are "scams."

Uwingu's association with the Mars One project, he said, sets its program apart.

"The legitimacy is that this is the map that they will use on all of their missions, and, furthermore, they are going to physically carry this map to the surface of Mars, which makes it really neat for people who are participating," Stern said. "And these are not naming rights on Mars. They are naming rights on the map that Mars One will use."

Mars One is the not-for-profit brainchild of Dutch engineer and entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, who intends to land an initial crew of four people on the Martian surface in 2025, the first step in building a permanent human settlement on Mars. Additional crews of four will then depart for Mars every two years.

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Last year, Mars One selected Lockheed Martin to develop a mission concept study for its Mars robotic lander, slated for a 2018 launch.

Stern said Uwingu — the name means "sky" in Swahili — intends to create a new Mars map for all of the roughly 590,000 "unnamed but scientifically catalogued" craters on the red planet. The project was launched in March.

"The smallest craters(under a kilometer in size) are $5, which are great for stocking stuffers and gifts like that," Stern said. "You get a certificate in the mail, or we'll send one framed through UPS. Over 14,000 craters have been named this way now and we think it's a cool holiday idea."

Some people, he said, have bought naming rights to multiple craters.

Doug Duncan, director of the University of Colorado's Fiske Planetarium, said the Uwingu initiative is far better than commercial pitches people might see for naming a star, for example.

"I consider that to be somewhat unethical" Duncan said of such star naming, "because astronomers would never know those names, wouldn't use them and all the money is going to the company.

"This (Uwingu) is better, in the sense that the people doing it are extending a lot of the money to advance further exploration of the planets, and the people involved are scientists," he said.

Duncan sees the Uwingu venture as comparable to a Kickstarter campaign, in which people can help a band record its music, and also get to hear that music. He did, however, voice a note of skepticism about whether Mars One will meet its goal.

"I think that's a very long shot, I think," he said. "But I probably would have thought the Tesla was a long shot and I saw one driving around Boulder yesterday."

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